The Sagas of Icelanders

September 17, 2018Comments.. 394

The Sagas of Icelanders In Iceland the age of the Vikings is also known as the Saga Age A unique body of medieval literature the Sagas rank with the world s great literary treasures as epic as Homer as deep in tragedy as

In Iceland, the age of the Vikings is also known as the Saga Age A unique body of medieval literature, the Sagas rank with the world s great literary treasures as epic as Homer, as deep in tragedy as Sophocles, as engagingly human as Shakespeare Set around the turn of the last millennium, these stories depict with an astonishingly modern realism the lives and deeds ofIn Iceland, the age of the Vikings is also known as the Saga Age A unique body of medieval literature, the Sagas rank with the world s great literary treasures as epic as Homer, as deep in tragedy as Sophocles, as engagingly human as Shakespeare Set around the turn of the last millennium, these stories depict with an astonishingly modern realism the lives and deeds of the Norse men and women who first settled in Iceland and of their descendants, who ventured farther west to Greenland and, ultimately, North America Sailing as far from the archetypal heroic adventure as the long ships did from home, the Sagas are written with psychological intensity, peopled by characters with depth, and explore perennial human issues like love, hate, fate and freedom.

SagaSagas are stories mostly about ancient Nordic and Germanic history, early Viking voyages, the battles that took place during the voyages, and migration to Iceland and of feuds between Icelandic families They were written in the Old Norse language, mainly in Iceland. The texts are tales in prose which share some similarities with the epic, often with stanzas or whole poems in alliterative Index Icelandic Saga Database The Icelandic Saga Database is an online resource dedicated to publishing the Sagas of the Icelanders a large body of medieval Icelandic literature.The sagas are prose histories describing events that took place amongst the Norse and Celtic inhabitants of Iceland during the period of the Icelandic Commonwealth in the th and th centuries AD. The Sagas of Icelanders Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition The Sagas of Icelanders Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition Robert Kellogg, Various, Jane Smiley on FREE shipping on qualifying offers A unique body of medieval literature, the Sagas rank with the world s greatest literary treasures as epic as Homer Iceland Land of the Sagas Jon Krakauer, David Roberts Iceland Land of the Sagas Jon Krakauer, David Roberts on FREE shipping on qualifying offers We raised our fists and cheered With the sagas in our heads, with Iceland at its wildest beneath our boots Second Ave Sagas A New York City Subway Blog A New York City Subway Blog Under the best case scenario, Phase of the Second Ave Subway will not open until , and this three stop extension of the Q train through East Harlem may not be ready for passengers until , according to new documents released last week by the MTA. Oeselians Battles and raids The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia describes a fleet of sixteen ships and five hundred Oeselians ravaging the area that is now southern Sweden, then belonging to Denmark.In the XIVth book of Gesta Danorum, Saxo Grammaticus describes a battle on land in in which the Danish king Valdemar I mobilised his entire fleet to curb the incursions of Couronian and Estonian pirates. Texas small town sagas, murders, hangings, disasters The Tar and Feathering of Father Joseph M Keller, Slaton, Texas, s by James Villanueva On a Saturday night, March , , in Slaton, what may have begun as a whisper, an aside, a comment, or just mindless chatter amongst neighbors, transformed the community Twins Myth Encyclopedia mythology, Greek, god, story Because twinship is a rare and special state, some cultures said that certain gods and heroes were twins In Greek mythology, notable sets of twins included the deities Apollo and Artemis and two remarkable sisters, Helen and Clytemnestra, who were also the sisters of Castor and Pollux. Icelandic Saga Map Welcome to the homepage of the Icelandic Saga Map project As well as the interactive Saga Map itself link top right, The Sagas , you will find information about the project and its objectives the people working on the project tips on how to use the interactive map notes about, and links to, other resources. It s A Gas Balloons, Displays, Special FX Party Supplies The balloon industry and It s a Gas is aware of its social and environmental obligations and has an obligation to ensure that retailers and consumers are aware of the best use of the product.

1 Blog on “The Sagas of Icelanders”

Stories are important. Maybe even essential. We learn about each other through stories; whether it be the Cliff Notes version of ourselves we tell to coworkers and clients or the long narratives enjoyed of our child's daily exploits at school. Long before our first attempts at writing stories we shared tales of ourselves, our heritage, our world through the spoken word. Homer's hymns, Aesop's fables or Icelandic sagas - they are all instructive, rich and certainly the greater for having been hea [...]

Wow. This book was a huge undertaking, but it was completely worth the effort. The stories are at once familiar and utterly foreign, and so, so fascinating. It took me a while to fall into the patterns and rhythms of the sagas; they tend to wander, go down long tangents, circle back the long way, and then eventually present a central story of sorts. And that’s not to mention that about 80% of the characters – men and women – have names beginning with the prefix “Thor”. I’m not joking [...]

This book is immediately misleading in that the title might make you think it contains all the Icelandic sagas. It does not; not even close. What it does contain is two of the longest sagas and a selection of the shorter ones (including the Vinland Sagas) as well as a selection of "Tales".This single volume is a Penguin reprint of part of the complete multi-volume translation into English of all the Icelandic mediaeval sagas and tales conducted under the general editorship of Ornolfur Thorsson b [...]

Because the same language was spoken in north-east England and Icleand at the time of the arrival of William the Conqueror many English speakers consider Icelandic literature to be part of their cultural heritage. For those who subscribe to this notion, this handsome volume will be a great delight.The sagas were all translated simultaneously under the direction of a signal committee which imposed consistent translations of words for all the works. My own feeling is that what resulted was an arti [...]

I picked up this tome a few years ago and tried to speed through it, like I was reading a history book or a modern, plot-driven page-turner. Bad idea. It was like trying to speedread the Bible, where a verse or two can encapsulate an entire life. In anything, the sagas are even more spare and packed with action than the Bible.So, this go around, I am taking the sagas on one at a time. I just finished reading The Saga of the People of Vatnsdal, a tale that extends across five generations of a fam [...]

Pretty much the first thing that struck me about these sagas is how immediately accessible they are – I have read medieval texts before (even if not very many), and usually (i.e unless one happens to be a medievalist) it takes a lengthy introduction and extensive notes for any modern-day reader to even get the point of any tale from that period, not to mention any deeper significance or wider-ranging connotations. Not that one should expect a penetrating exploration of the conditio humana from [...]

The best one-volume introduction to the sagas. The translation of Egil's Saga features much better English versions of the verses than its predecessors, whicih is essential since it's the biography of a skaldic poet. In Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue, on the other hand, the verses rhyme. Laxdaela is very good, as is Gisli. Of course, the editors had to make tough choices about what to include. Personally, I would've left out the Vinland sagas and the tales in favor of Njal's, and included Grettir rathe [...]

Prose stories detailing the various misadventures of man and woman who were born or exiled to or who died in Iceland from, roughly speaking 900-1200 AD. What's the point of reading ancient works of world literature? 1) it gives you some insight into a past culture, and into the broader sweep of history. 2) it's difficult, and strange, and not like reading anything written in the last few centuries, and there's a value to that in and of itself. 3) there are always a handful of peculiar concepts w [...]

The sagas and tales in this selection account for maybe a bit less than 2/5 of the entire corpus of the Íslendinga sögur - respectable as far as selections go, and for all but a select few, more than enough to convey the general content and scope of this strange body of literature. For all their interweavings, the truth is that nearly every saga I've sampled (from this book, and volumes I and IV of the complete translation) expresses essentially the same qualities of genealogical grounding, pa [...]

ICELAND'S CONTRIBUTION TO WORLD CULTURERoots time for me. I am half Icelandic. People tend to think of the ancient Norsemen as barbaric murderers. Well, they went a-Viking, and you probably wouldn't want to meet them on one of their "shopping trips". But the Norse had a rich and complicated culture, their own religion, and some of the most powerful sagas in the world. Icelanders were the scribes and intellectuals. The Icelandic sagas have been compared to the Greek in scope and power. Sample a c [...]

More history than sagas themselves, this book nonetheless provides a geographical and demographic backdrop for the Norse Sagas which we have remaining to us following their 13th century compilation and preservation in Iceland, primarily by Snorri Sturlusson.

I've spent the past month reading many of the major sagas included in this edition, specifically, EGILS SAGA SKALLAGRIMMSON, HRAFNKEL'S SAGA FREYSGODI and LAXDAELA SAGA. I've done so with a great deal of enjoyment, as I'd really never read anything like this. They're essentially just stories about farmers in various degrees of conflict--none of them very complex, none of them very intrcate, all of them very good.I really enjoyed both EGILS SAGA and LAXDAELA SAGA, because they were kind of connec [...]

What a joy to read this book in my timber cabin in the woods, by the flickering of a log fire, with a hard frost outside, and a full moon shining from a starlit northern sky. Perfect conditions in which to enjoy these vivid translations, and feel transported to a more congenial time and place (except for the sudden eruptions of deadly violence)I would have given five stars except that some of my favourite sagas are omitted; and also, I wish the publishers hadn't had the daft idea of rough-cuttin [...]

I originally got ahold of this book because I decided to do some research into Viking-Age Iceland for the novel I'm writing, and the Sagas were the perfect place to go.That said, at first I found the Sagas pretty challenging (who knew medieval literature was hard?). The stories were interesting and I learned loads about the culture, but the detached writing style and rather different storytelling than what I was used to slowed me down a lot. I think it took me almost two months to finish them al [...]

I’m currently reading the Sagas of IcelandEgil's SagaEgil and his entire family are pricks. Given how this is a story about a great family, the lessons I get is that great men have the capacity for being good and being terrible. Every generation of the family has an ugly and troublemaking brother as well as a handsome and good brother. The good brother dies every time, but with his death, the troublemaker brother comes into his own. The entire family preaches justice, but are always willing to [...]

The Sagas of Icelanders is an expansive collection of Icelandic family sagas and stories. Most of them were written from the 13th and 14th century. Iceland and Greenland were settled a few centuries earlier and the sagas cover the stories of that settlement. With all the interest in Vikings and the success of the TV series, it was fun to go back to some of the original stories of the real Viking adventures.There are several sagas. Their society is very different from the feudal society of the re [...]

I think the Vinland Sagas were my favourite, but not just because of Newfoundland. They’re better stories, I think. I keep thinking about when the exploratory party has to survive on the meat of beached whales, and the one crewman who regrets converting to Christianity is overwhelmed with despair. And Freydis Eriksdottir! I’d love to go back to L’Anse Aux Meadows someday. I started reading the Sagas hoping for something alien and unknown, and ended up reading stories that were strangely fa [...]

I am currently reading this, in no particular order, and am loving it! The characters are so utterly recognisable in their human attributes, both positive and negative. These sagas give an insight into the culture and history of those times. I am not finding these sagas archaic or "difficult" either: the stories romp along with such gusto, uncluttered by unnecessary verbiage.I started with Gisli Sursson's saga, simply because I had seen on Vimeo a wonderful short film called "Memories of old awa [...]

The following is not really a review, so skip it if that's what you're after:-------------------------------------------I've read several of the sagas included in this collection before (Egil's, Laxardal, Bolli Bollason, Greenlanders, and Eirik the Red), and I intend to deal with additional sagas separately if I review them. However, there are also several "tales" given here that I haven't seen elsewhere, i.e the shorter works known as Þáttr, and I might as well make some notes on individual t [...]

The Icelandic Sagas are a remarkable collection of medieval literature. While in England, France and elsewhere the literature were verse works concentrating on Kings and rulers, the Icelandic Sagas were prose narratives describing ordinary Icelanders especially their heroes who were often on the edge of society. Eril's Saga, the first in the book, is, at least for me, too much of a chronological story of people starting in Norway and then traveling to Iceland. It becomes more interesting toward [...]

The Sagas of Icelanders are the stories of the first people settling Iceland, recorded in the 13th century, although the events actually took place as early as 830. Most of them are fairly interesting but they can be difficult to follow because there are so many characters some of which have the same names (Gisil Sursson's Saga has two people named Gisil and the Saga of Eirik the Red has two Eiriks) or have names that are very similar (so many names starting with Thor). They take a lot of concen [...]

I know I'm probably biased, but this stuff is awesome. As a monument of western literature, the sagas and tales of the Icelanders are as strange as they are magnificent. Intensely violent, utterly human, and completely entertaining. Don't let the thought of having to read Beowulf again fool you. This is not Beowulf. The sagas are surprisingly realistic. Check it out. You'll be glad. Make sure you start with some of the shorter sagas though. The long ones, though great, can be a little too detail [...]

I've read various sags before but never such a huge "chunk" at one go. The language (the Icelandic daughter of one of the translators tells me they capture the feel of the original very well) gets into your blood. I've been going around for days saying things like "that would not seem to be far wrong" or "it may be that I would not be the one who would be far wrong should you turn out to be not entirely right". And the names! The names are demented and wonderful. Essential stuff.

1. What inspired Tolkien's names.2. That early Icelanders were a paradox: poet, pirate, farmers who besides exhibiting tremendous individualism and sense of freedom, developed sophisticated legal systems and literature.Egil's Saga was perhaps the most impressive and the one I keep rereading.